A position coding model that accounts for the effects of event boundaries on temporal order memory

Abstract

Episodic memories, particularly temporal order memory, are influenced by event boundaries. Although numerous theoretical and computational models have been developed to explain this phenomenon, creating a model that can explain a wide range of behavioral data and is supported by neural evidence remains a significant challenge. This study presented a new model, grounded in ample evidence of position coding, to account for the impact of event boundaries on temporal order memory. The proposed model successfully simulated various behavioral effects in previous experiments measuring temporal order memory. Our model outperformed the context-resetting model in fitting all the data and capturing the full set of effects in previous and newly conducted experiments, including the boundary effect, the distance effect, the local primacy effect, and the absence of boundary number effect. These findings underscore a novel mechanism in which event boundaries affect temporal order memory by resetting the local position coding of events.